


Call of the Sea

by TurtleTotem



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [25]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: M/M, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 08:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16888989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: Bit of a not-fic about selkie!Erik and fisherman!Charles. On Tumblrhere.





	Call of the Sea

In the middle of the night, Charles sees Erik bathing in a tidal pool, and thinks he’s drowning. He jumps in to save him, and they basically fall in love at first sight. When they get out of the water, Charles picks up what he thinks is his own discarded cloak to wrap in – only to discover it’s a sealskin. Erik is a selkie, and by taking his skin Charles has married him and trapped him on land.

Erik loves Charles, and they have a happy life together with their children (maybe Charles is widowed with kids, or maybe selkie men can bear children), but Erik never stops feeling the call of the sea. It’s the nature of a selkie. Charles knows he’s being selfish and keeping Erik prisoner, but he can’t bear to let him go. He keeps the sealskin hidden.

One night, Charles’s fishing boat doesn’t make it back to shore before a terrible storm sets in. When his boat sinks, a seal comes up from the water and rescues him, pulling him to shore.

When Charles regains consciousness in the morning and staggers home, Erik is gone. The children say that in the middle of the night he suddenly broke open a chest – the one where Charles had put the sealskin, thinking it hidden – flung the skin around himself and leaped off their little dock into the ocean.

Some say that a selkie simply cannot resist returning to the sea once they have the opportunity, however much they love their human families. Others say they might return if they could, but that their human form is simply lost forever once their sealskin is restored. Either way, they never come back.

For the rest of his life, Charles is often to be found, in the wee hours of the morning, sitting on the end of the dock with his feet in the water, talking to someone who isn’t there. When he is very, very old, his granddaughter Jean, who takes care of him, sees him there one night – and in the morning he is gone. Everyone thinks he must have fallen into the water and drowned, but they never find a body.

They only find a little shred of a sealskin cloak, caught on a nail at the end of the dock.


End file.
